Unwanted by Linda Boulanger

When I first started writing again after so many years of not picking up a pen, I thought Christian Fiction was the way I would go, especially after my friend, Pat Sipperly, pulled me into a writing group called FaithWriters. They had weekly challenges with different levels and, low and behold, the first story I entered won in its level. I was shocked but elated as well. I was also hooked and continued on, working my way up with a win here and there until I received the highest honor... an Editor's Choice.

Looking back, those wins may not have been that great to most people, but to me... I may as well have won the lottery. They gave me faith in my stories and my ability to write, and they pushed me to explore where I wanted to go as a author.

It took me several years to come to the realization that my heart is in Historical Romance. I've dabbled in a lot of genres along the way... including that time in Christian Fiction. That's a time that will always be near and dear to my heart and I'd like to share my Editor's Choice winning story with you. It's an idea that I think I'll eventually work into one of my Historical Romances, because I really like it. It touches the heart. It's called Unwanted. Enjoy!

Betrayal. Is there a more justifiable reason to be angry? I had every reason in the world to be bitter. I was swallowed up in the deepest, darkest time of my life, but God wasn’t giving me any slack.

I had done nothing wrong!

I was still seething as I looked down at the tiny bundle wrapped in soft pink. She returned my gaze, her eyes filled with trust. They were the bluest eyes I’d ever seen. Sweet. She looked so sweet.

I picked her up, feeling her tiny nose against my cheek, soft yet firm, like nothing I had ever felt before. She nestled against me as I held her in my arms. I breathed deeply, the aroma of baby lotion, powder, and her distinctive scent filled my head. She smelled like him, her father…. my husband.

I didn’t want to love her, vowed I would not the day he told me about her and that he wanted to bring her home. To our home! His child with another woman… brought into this world by a chance encounter… and I was supposed to take her in and love her as my own.

Preposterous!

I had resolved to harden my heart toward her. Bitterness had tried to creep in.

I’d already made my peace with my husband… with an awful lot of help from God. I had come to terms with the fact that, perhaps, it had even been my obsession with the need for a baby that had driven him away for a time. It had been difficult enough but we’d gotten through it. And then he’d learned of this child, his child, to be given away without a care from her real mother.

And now, here she was, so small, so helpless. She was soft within my arms, looking to me to take care of her, to show her a world where someone cared.

“God, how could you do this to me? How can I do for her what is needed when my heart is hurting so?”

I’d been denied my own child in life. Years of trying had left me with nothing but a hardened heart, wounded pride, and a taste of bitterness in my mouth. The barren woman… and now this child.

She began to fuss. I laid her back and she looked at me again. I was touched by the total lack of judgment in her eyes. She had no idea how tormented I was or that I had planned not to love her, only that she needed someone to take care of her and that I seemed to be doing a pretty good job at that very moment. Her own mother didn’t care, didn’t love her; had not even loved my husband as I did.

I brushed the palm of my hand across the soft down that covered the top of her head. She liked it. Her eyes took on that dreamy look and I smiled. The realization of how much she needed me washed over me with great cleansing waves.

I leaned down and kissed her forehead. Her eyes fluttered, and then shut. I could feel her breath. Soft sweet whispers caressed my face as I rubbed her cheek with my own.

In her sleep, she smiled. It was an angel’s smile.

I couldn’t hate her.

My bitterness faded away. She was the answer to my prayer for a child.

I resolved right then to be her mother, to be that someone who would love her no matter what. I thanked God for giving me the chance to make certain she never felt unwanted.

Whatever Possessed Me to Become a Writer ~ by author Elizabeth Keysian

Apart from writing to the Puffin Club when I was about nine—saying I wanted to be an author, and looking for advice—and producing some awful poetry full of teenage angst, my writing journey really began in 1997.

Some of my inspiration came from all the crushes I’d had (I was a sucker for unrequited love and admiring from afar.) I’d lie awake and picture scenarios where the exalted one would suddenly notice how wonderful I was, and whisk me off to bed/into the sunset/to the altar (depending upon how healthy I was feeling at the time.)

The rest of my need to write resulted from frustration with other authors and script writers. I would read or watch a potential love scene that didn’t play out the way I wanted, so I’d rewrite it in my mind.

Well, that accounts for the romance part of my writing journey. The historical part has always been with me. My father used to take me to castles and museums when I was a child. He had to really, as he was a headteacher and therefore in sole charge of me during school holidays (my mother worked). He also encouraged me to be quiet during these long vacations—I was an only child, with few friends in the village where we lived so I didn’t get out much and was always under his feet. He achieved the calm he needed by burying me in books (mostly published by Puffin, as mentioned above) and providing stacks of blank white paper upon which to write or draw.

I did try the drawing, and managed some passable stuff in pencil, but I was too messy to work with any other medium. Besides, both parents had been to art school, so I had to rebel, and choose writing over art, right?

Sadly, the creativity died when I had to prepare myself for the real

world of university (a history degree, naturally) and the need to earn money, which I did as an archaeologist, an illustrator, a special needs teacher, and a museum professional. The catalyst to start writing again came in 1997 when I moved county for a new job and had to leave my partner behind for six moths while he finished up his own job as archaeologist on a Knights Templar site in Essex, England. Coming home to an empty house each night was making me drink too much of the local beer and eat too much hard goat’s cheese (I have an allergy to cow), so writing was a great distraction. 

The other incentive was that we’d been to Cape Town that summer

to visit family, and I wanted to raise enough money to go again.

I started putting my fantasies and daydreams into words and submitting to Mills and Boon, in hopes of making enough money by the year 2000 for the flights back to Cape Town. I shall pause here, to allow the reader time to laugh at my naivety. Yes, I got some interest from that publisher and was asked to submit several complete manuscripts, but I just couldn’t get the formula right. I now know it was because I fleshed out my stories with too many subsidiary characters. Whoops.

Then came the illnesses, which meant there were long spells of time when I couldn’t write at all. Chronic fatigue in 2000, worsening migraine and chronic daily headaches shortly thereafter, then RSI in both wrists as a result of working too hard on a museum exhibition.  NaNoWriMo kept me going when I was well enough to write, and then I broke my foot. 

Having to sit in a chair all day with your leg propped up can be a bit boring, so I started tapping away on my laptop and trying to finish some of the stories I’d begun. Finally, in 2015, after eighteen years of failing to be published by Mills and Boon, I entered Harlequin’s So You Think You Can Write contest, which operated via the Wattpad platform. Hurrah! People wanted to read my stories! I wasn’t a complete failure! I didn’t qualify in the contest, but I met some awesome fellow writers and learned about pitch contests. 

In 2016, just after losing my job due to the chronic illnesses, I entered several stories into the #PitMad contest and got a bite from Nina Bruhns, senior editor at Entangled Publishing. I went on to publish five books with them, one with Soul Mate Publishing, and a few novellas which are self-published. 

This year I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis (an autoimmune disease I’d never heard of before) that can mess up your health quite badly AND I damaged my back, which made writing difficult yet again. But there IS a silver lining—while lying in bed in pain, or unable to move or sleep, you can cook up some pretty stonking plot lines! I’m getting treatment for hypothyroidism now, which has helped a bit, and my hunger for writing is returning. You have been warned, people! There’s life left in this old dog yet!

My latest offering is A TREACHEROUS ENGAGEMENT, Book #2 in the Marry in Haste series, and I’ll be finishing Book #3 and writing Book #4 during this November’s NaNoWriMo. I hope…

If you’ve stuck with me and read the above ramble, thank you. 

**Note: All photos are property of Elizabeth Keysian and may not be reproduced without permission

Bestselling author Elizabeth Keysian adores history and archaeology, and writes romances that give the reader an experience of travelling back in time.

Elizabeth Keysian

She feels very British-despite her Viking ancestry-and loves creating rich backdrops for her stories based on real places and actual experiences. She used to be a re-enactor, so has sampled the living conditions, clothing, and smells of the past. She’s also sampled the food, which was actually pretty good.

Her characters battle their problems with both tears and laughter, but she always guarantees them a Happily Ever After, no matter what she’s put them through.  You may connect with Elizabeth by clicking on the links below.

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Choosing Historical Fiction ~ by Author DK Marley

I am sure my story is not unique among writers. We all have that little itch that begins in childhood (at least that is when mine started) of telling stories, creating imaginary worlds, falling down rabbit holes, and the like. Alice and I were kindred spirits, skipping through the woods behind my grandparent's house, lost in a world of our own.

My childhood imaginings later developed into writing around middle school. The book that truly got me thinking about writing something of my own was Green Mansions by William Henry Hudson, as well as an insatiable appetite for all the books of Victoria Holt.

During my first year of High School, I started my very first novel. I think about that story now and cringe, but also smile to see how far I have come on my writing journey Oh, how I have learned and continue to learn, which is how it should be for a writer in any genre. For me, a writer needs to be a voracious reader, which I am to my own detriment sometimes because I have to remind myself that I need to get back to own stories.

The choice to become a historical fiction author felt so comfortable when I finally started finding my voice in the late 1980s. I wrote a novel back then of a young girl growing up in Kashmir during the British occupation, right before the Indian Mutiny, who was half Indian and half British. When I started doing the research for the novel, I knew then where I needed to be. Researching historical people and events found a home in my heart and in my novels.

That manuscript still sits on my shelf waiting for awakening. Perhaps, one day.

In 1997 is really when I started finding my voice as a writer for that

year was my very first visit to the UK. I dove into the history, toured every historical place I always heard about and dreamed about, especially anything having to do with William Shakespeare.

All those years ago, when I was that little girl creating worlds in my mind, my grandmother, an English Literature teacher, sparked my interest in literature and Shakespeare at the burgeoning age of eleven. She gave me her college textbooks and I finished reading both from cover to cover within a few months. My mind blossomed with the words of the Bard, Milton, Marlowe, Jonson, Sidney, and on and on... So when I visited the places in 1997, I knew a story was begging to be told. I just needed to find the right one.

During the trip, I visited the Globe Theatre in Southwark, and it was here that something spoke to me. A pair of eyes looked back at me from a display in the museum at the Globe, almost begging for me to tell his story. I started researching the relationship between Kit Marlowe and William Shakespeare, about the authorship question, and the rest is history.

Since that faithful day, and after years of writing, and editing, and

rewriting, and crying, and almost giving up; then going to an amazing writer's retreat and finding some incredible mentors, my first novel saw the light of day.

I published "Blood and Ink" (the first edition was only ten copies for my family and friends in 2010). The reaction was not what I hoped for and as a newbie writer, my heart broke. I gave up writing for five whole years. For five years, the itch never left me, but I never scratched. And then, tragedy struck our family. In February of 2015, a drunk driver took the lives of my daughter and son-in-law. In a flash, everything changed.

During my attempt to find a way to cope with the unbearable grief, I started a journal to my daughter, telling her things I wanted her to know as if we were still having conversations on the phone. A grief counselor told me that I needed to use this outlet as a way to heal. Writing burst back into my life at the moment I truly needed it. The release of writing the actions of my characters, the arc of the story, and the way the story ends gave control back to my life in a most unexpected way. Even the decision to self-publish empowered me.

Too many things were out of my control - the loss of my precious children, the day-to-day waking up with the emptiness and depression, the dealing with a callous unrepentant wrongdoer in the court case against the driver - so writing is healing me.

I will never be the same, of course. I am forever in that club now, a club I never wanted to be a part of, but it is what it is. Writing gives me a voice and writing about historical people and the past gives me the chance to connect with the past. Through the generations and centuries, we touch those now gone, we hear their voices, when we write historical fiction. Who knows, perhaps one day I will write a story for my daughter; but for now, to continue the legacy my grandmother gave me is enough. One day at a time, one word at a time, we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past (my favorite line from F. Scott Fitzgerald).

D. K. Marley is a historical fiction author specializing in Shakespearean themes. The "Shakespearean Madeline Miller", if you will. She is a true Stratfordian (despite the topic of her novel "Blood and Ink"), a Marlowe fan, a member of the Marlowe Society, the Shakespeare Fellowship and a signer of the Declaration of Intent for the Shakespeare Authorship Debate. Her new series titled "The Fractured Shakespeare Series" adapts each legendary play into a historical fiction novel. She has traveled to England three times for intensive research and debate workshops and is a graduate of the intense training workshop "The Writer's Retreat Workshop" founded by Gary Provost and hosted by Jason Sitzes. She lives in Georgia with her husband and a Scottish Terrier named Molly. You can get in touch with her via the links below.

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